LTS, Long Time Support

Commands

The second big change is the “Commands” folder is being renamed to “Jobs” to indicate it’s primarily for queued jobs. This folder change will not be a backwards compatibility break.

PSR-2

The app and generators are converting to PSR-2. If you are not familiar with PSR-2, it’s a Coding Style Guide. The biggest change from current Laravel style is tabs to spaces and control structures will now go on the same line.

Middleware Parameters

This new feature allows you to pass parameters into the middleware. Here is a screenshot of a demo:

Broadcasting Events

Laravel already offers an excellent event system. But what if we had an elegant way to broadcast these very events to our JavaScript? Consider things like web sockets or Pusher integration. What if we could make this increasingly common task laughably simple? Well, we can with this new feature.

CSRF Except

In Laravel 5.0 all requests are ran through the CSRF middleware and this is great for most use cases. However, one gotcha is using services with web hooks where you do not have the ability to set a token. A new feature in 5.1 is an except property on the VerifyCsrfToken class which will allow this to be easily over-ridden.

protected $except = [
'webhook/*'
];

Completely Overhauled Documentation

The documentation is going through a huge transformation. More code samples, easier to read, more methods documented, and just all around better.

Better Testing

With an inclusion of Laracast’s integrated testing package testing your application is going to be easier than ever before.